The Song Remains the Same
by wait-what013
Summary: She knows who her dad is, has known for a w h i l e. But that doesn't make it any less intimidating to come face to face with him. (Tony Stark Father&Daughter fic that's a hell of a lot different than what you're expecting, probably)
1. 1

Fucking frogs.

Gross, slimy, green fuckers.

If Lucia had had to pick her least favorite animal before this exact moment, she never would have said "frogs". Sure, they're rather annoying at times when they won't stop their incessant quacking, robbing one of sleep and ultimately patience. But there were much _much_ worse things out there.

Spiders. Worms. Stupid cicadas. But it had to have been the fucking frogs to land her at the precinct.

"Again, from the beginning please. The recording will be submitted as formal evidence, if charges are pressed," a tired voice drawled from Lucia's right. Despite the feeling of guilt expanding in her stomach, Lucia held herself back from shrinking in on herself. Daniel was just doing his job.

"June 15th, two in the morning. Was doing my usual rounds 'round the compound's perimeter. We'd been dealing with fuckers stealing parts for a while. First car parts, then those idiots trying to score bits of metal from that alien invasion. Government's real picky about those so instead of one round a night we need to go 'round more often. But nothing unusual that night. Just a fucking noisy summer night. Y'know, humid with a bunch of cicadas ruining the mood, among other things," the man across from Lucia stated, then looked at her with a smirk before adding, "Frogs."

Biting back a remark at the cackling idiot, Lu gripped the base of the plastic chair, clenching her jaw and ignoring Daniel's hard glare.

"Continue, Mr. Oswald," Daniel urged him and cleared his throat. The idiot was none the wiser but Lu had been subjected to that same harrumph for the past six years and knew she had better keep her mouth shut.

Henry Oswald had been stinking up the room the minute they had both been ushered into it. The smell of cold stale cigarette smoke and cheap beer was already penetrating every crevice.

But Daniel, unlike Lucia, was professional enough to not let it get the better of him. The only hints of annoyance were in his brows and his nose. The usual high arches seemed to have finally been made acquainted with gravity, his nose lying crinkled between them. If she hadn't seen that displeased face every week of her life after another unnecessary argument between her cousin and herself, she probably wouldn't have been able to spot his annoyance that easily. Lucia probably didn't look all that different from him. They were both pissed off, although – naturally – for very different reasons.

The interrogation room was dark and moist despite the fact that most of its interior was either cheap plastic or metal, and for the offense at hand it was overkill. The state had succeeded, if its objective was to make its suspects and victims as uncomfortable as possible. Although she wished that the idiot next to her was less comfortable. If only she could-

"Look at her!" the idiot's excited roar made her flinch and she took a deep breath, involuntarily inhaling his stink. His expression was somewhere between amusement and wonder, eyeing her from head to toe, from clenched jaw to twitching fingers. And he was enjoying it, too. "Little bitch's mad at _me_ for keeping track of what's mine, _the nerve_ ," he cackled, spitting all the way across the table and making Lucia jerk away.

Turning her pleading eyes to Daniel, she hoped he'd get her message of defeat. She didn't give in easily but it was five in the morning and she really didn't have the stomach for a person like Oswald anymore.

Seeing Daniel nod sent a flood of relief through her body.

"If you could just state the offense Ms. Johnson here supposedly committed," he encouraged Oswald and rubbed his eyes.

"She stole parts again, that's the offense!" he hollered, anger suddenly spreading in the already stifling room. "Hadn't it been for those frogs, I wouldn't even have noticed her! Stopped their damn quacking long enough for me to get an earful of her rummaging through things that are none of her fucking business! Was about to steal a thousand dollars' worth of stuff, easily!"

"Nothing on that fucking yard is worth a thousand dollars, Henry!" Lucia spat back, finally finding her voice with her fists balled and nose scrunched up.

"It must be, if you wanted it so bad!"

"Oh you fu-," she started but despite her attempt at lunging across the table, she only came as far as raising her hips slightly from the creaking chair until Daniel had caught her by her arms and pressed her ass down again, all in one swift motion.

Oswald cackled away on the other side of the table and leaned back against the chair, enjoying that he got to watch her getting scolded like a little child.

"Mr. Oswald," Daniel started, shielding his mouth with a hand to distract from an oncoming yawn, "We didn't find any stolen goods on Ms. Johnson here and the yard is in fact owned by the city. There are no charges to be pressed, at least not by you," he stated and patted Lucia's shoulder. Check and mate. None of the two men needed to know that the parts were indeed stowed away outside of the scrap yard behind a very dead pot of Marigolds. She had chucked them there while Henry had raged and dragged her from the yard to her uncle's precinct. "If you'll excuse us, I will send another officer to go over the paperwork, then you're free to leave. Have a good day."

"Good day it'll be," Henry seethed, watching Daniel usher Lucia out of the room.

Giving Lucia a light shove to make her walk through the door, he held back a sigh until the door fell into its lock behind them with a bang.

"Why?" he asked.

"I didn't take anything!"

"Oh stop lying," he scolded. "Why do you keep doing that? It's pure junk. There is no possible way you're able to make anything possibly functioning out of that crap."

Lucia shrugged, saving her words and making way for shame and guilt in her expression. Overwhelmingly, it was guilt for making Daniel deal with Henry McIdiot at the crack of dawn. The shame came because Lu knew he was mostly right. Moving in to give him a hug, she felt him pat her back, first reluctantly but then she felt his hand move in small circles across her back. "Go home," he mumbled against her head. "I'll deal with this. Tanya's worried sick. If you don't get home right now that 'til death do us part'-thing will have a whole other meaning."

Nodding against his chest, she started to slowly untangle herself when he sternly added, "It's also a-"

"A school night, I know," she finished, blinking back the need for sleep creeping up on her. She knew he was right so she finally let go and started moving down the corridor of the dimly lit precinct until she heard him call after her.

"Yeah?" she asked, confusion settling in when she saw him pick up something from a nearby table. There were no pamphlets in this precinct Lu hadn't already been presented with at one point or another.

Licking his lips, he tapped it against his open palm a few times. "Found something. He's in town, Lu. Expo or some other thing."

A tiny bit of knowledge of _that_ man's whereabouts was enough to make her stomach clench up, unable to move but sending her heartbeat into a frantic rhythm. "Oh fuck me," she muttered, more for show. Had she expressed her true feelings, a few curse words would not have been enough.

Stretching out his hand with the flyer in it he expected her to take it. She looked at it long and hard.

"You're burning a hole through it with that stare of yours," Daniel commented and Lu snapped out of it long enough to grab the cursed piece of paper from him, despite the queasiness she was feeling. "Chance of a lifetime, Lu."

"What good does it do after seventeen years?" she asked, her eyes not leaving the flyer and taking in the bold script and the blinding white smile of the man next to it. But her question had been too quiet and she didn't dare repeat it out loud. So with one last glance at Daniel, she crumbled up the flyer and started walking home. Her first glance at her father through something other than a screen wasn't going to happen anytime soon. He had survived thus far, he would live a while longer. She hoped.


	2. 2

Lucia couldn't remember the first time she had ever been told anything about her father. She knew she had been pestering her mother, like any child would, starving for any piece of evidence that she hadn't just been conceived through sheer luck or that her mother was something akin to the next Virgin Mary. What stuck out, however, was the first time she saw his face on TV, her mom's subsequent "oh" and how she had then tried to act as nonchalant as possible. She believed she was eight then, old enough to read her mother, young enough that the magnitude of that information was lost on her.

Despite her lack of knowledge regarding her father at the time, that reaction had been everything she needed to start piecing things together. At twelve, knowing one's father was famous was of paramount importance, even if no one else could know about it.

At seventeen, now, it was best represented by the state of the city around her.

After the Battle of New York a year ago Lucia had found peace with the fact that any relationship she might have been able to build with her supposed father was a fantasy. A fantasy built by the child inside of her that still needed the validation for her existence. But that fantasy was only a front for the disappointment in herself she felt for never having the courage to knock on his door. But Tony Stark had never been a normal person and knocking on his door may have never been a viable option to begin with. She would have needed to go to different measures. There were difficulties, the hoards of security buffs, the technological security measures. Maybe just one peek with her own eyes, not through a device, would have been enough. He _existed_. He was real. But watching him on TV had to be enough.

But then Tony Stark had dropped out of the sky like a shooting star and despite the initial horror that had surrounded them then, knowing one of the reasons for one's existence was still alive, out there and kicking sent her right back to square one. The possibility of never meeting her father made her think again until she came to a conclusion. She needed to meet him although she had no problem waiting another few years to establish contact, provided he didn't get killed first.

To her, any daydream left her feeling like she was trying to contact a different species and as she walked along the first sunlight of the day, a blinding white smile on a billboard caught her attention. Yeah, that one wasn't going to help her feelings of alienation from her blood family. Feeling the rumbling in her stomach return, Lu turned her back on it and went her way.

Most of the early sunlight was caught by the towering piles of metal at the yard, her appetite for breakfast swallowed by the smell of rust and decay. But the pot of dead Marigolds had done its job and Lu's backpack, despite most of its latches undone or broken, still held all of what she had had found.

Holding back a yawn, Lu shouldered the bag, the metal clunking against her shoulder blades with every step. At least finding her bag at the scrap yard did not call for a detour as she always passed it on her way home from the precinct. It was small and on the outskirts of Brooklyn, or what was left of it. Manhattan had taken the brunt of the attack, but Brooklyn still had to deal with its blown-out windows, crumbling walls and hoards of homeless people. But had it not been for those signs, she wouldn't have noticed that much of a difference.

As she walked step after careful step to her home with the knowledge that sleep was not in the cards that morning, she corrected her thoughts. Everything was different, even if their day to day life seemed like much the same. There were aliens, for God's sake. People weren't bound to forget that as quickly as the government would have liked them to. Especially as the apartment building her family and her resided in came into view, with half of the neighbouring building ripped away. It was going to take a while for everything to go back to normal, if that would ever even happen at all.

Arriving at the apartment on the fifth floor, Lu was careful to not make any noise. Tanya had always been a light sleeper and even though Lu loved her dearly, Tanya didn't do 'mothering'. Tanya often liked to do 'smothering'.

Sneaking into her room at the far end of the apartment, Lu was careful not to jostle her bag too much until she had stowed it away under her bed, pushing further with her leg when something else under it wouldn't budge.

Huffing, she looked around her room, her eyes falling onto the alarm clock on her bedside table. It was about to go off in less than half an hour and Lu hadn't slept in a while. But it was light out, school called and despite the reluctance brewing in her head, she knew she needed to go. She owed her mom that much.

Ripping open the curtains in her room, however, she came face to face with what she was trying to run away from. The billboard loudly proclaiming its guest star Tony Stark. Despite their similarities, the same dark hair and complexion, he was a stranger. He was a giant on a billboard in front of her room's only window, the main star of a tech convention in New York. And just the backdrop to the billboard sent her thoughts whizzing through her head again.

Most windows in the buildings around her had already been replaced shortly after but Brooklyn was Brooklyn and some people didn't care if there was one window or ten less.

She kept examining the billboard, plopping down onto the clothes piled high on her chair in deep thought. How her mother had ever gotten with _that_ would be a mystery she wasn't ever going to solve.

The opening and shutting of the front door ripped her out of her thoughts and the shuffling and sighing left little doubt as to who had arrived.

Daniel had been sighing an awful lot as of late and Lucia hated to admit that a good portion of it was due to her.

She heard his keys bump against the worn table in the front room, then his voice accompanied by her aunt Tanya's good morning wishes.

"Is she home?" she heard him ask and Lu finally allowed herself to shrink into a tiny ball.

"I heard her come in twenty minutes or so ago," she heard Tanya reply, then the sound of a short kiss. "Is she alright?"

"Yeah, yeah," Daniel said. "Oswald- do you remember Oswald, that dickhead? He held us up."

"He's a dickhead, alright," Tanya's soft laugh echoed through the otherwise quiet apartment. "I remember him from when I was a kid. Don't think that guy has ever looked any different."

"You know what they say, some people are born old."

"Explains Susan's ugly baby," Tanya quipped, and Lucia heard Daniel choke on a laugh, followed by a short silence before she had to strain to make out her aunt's next words. "What? You know I'm right. Anyway. Anything new? About getting more hours?"

"They say they can't, not even for a lower wage. It's difficult," Daniel replied, and Lu's heart dropped.

It was always the same thing. She lacked in nothing and was loved well in their household. But whenever she overheard their money talk and how tight things were, she felt guilty. She put an unnecessary strain on her family. That was something she knew without anyone telling her, she was smart enough to understand that. But hearing it being said made everything just a little bit more real and uncomfortable.

Lu jumped up, trying to shake these thoughts from her head. She got dressed, pulled her hair into a ponytail and, before she left the room, she used her foot to push the parts she had grabbed from Henry McIdiot's scrap yard further under the foot of her bed.

So, with another look around, a forced glance out of her window and lacking the sleep she absolutely needed, Lu grabbed her things and left for school

 **/**

Lucia had never known that trying to stay awake could be this tedious. The day had dragged on from first period to whatever period she was in now. She didn't exactly know. So she had gone to the science lab. If someone caught her, the chances were high she could still tell them quite a lot about the topic the teacher in her actual period was covering that day.

The science lab was also an excuse that worked a very high percentage of the time. As long as there was no visible decline in their performance in other subjects, the teachers were fine to have them tinkering away at the lab or the workshop. Granted, the students had to be within reach of a perfect score for it to not be a problem. But the Brooklyn High School of Technology was known for its students collecting scholarships like no other. Not like most of them needed it, as a lot of them were quite well off. But the school's reputation didn't hurt the less fortunate ones. And despite there being bad blood on some occasions, this never came to be due to fears of someone having been favored. They had all earned their place in one way or another.

So having abandoned her regular schedule, Lu found herself in the workshop. The high windows along the wall filled the hall with light and despite the several students tinkering away, it was never crowded, nor too noisy. The wooden tables and the countless boards along the walls holding the equipment seemed to absorb most of the noise.

Grabbing her recent project, she went to work. So far, it only resembled a misshapen metal sculpture but if things turned out the way Lu wanted them to - and that was currently a very big if - it was going to end up being something to help her do exactly what she had tried to do the night before.

Scourging for scraps at Henry McIdiot's yard had become somewhat of a past time for her. The yard was big, had everything from cars to computers to general household appliances and despite all the fun things she could round up there, there were no dogs. That was a very big plus.

But Henry had started to take better care of what he thought was his and had started dialling up the security measures. Lu had learned how to bypass his stupid selfmade tripwires that scared the living hell out of her the first time she had stumbled and heard the subsequent bang from the ring caps he had added to a modified mouse trap, or even a simple and modern motion detector. But one section of the yard had been secured so excessively a little while ago that she had no chance of even getting close to it. Naturally, that was exactly where she wanted to go.

So while she pondered over the possibilities of getting there, her project was still in its baby shoes, a slightly deformed mess that couldn't yet deal with any electrical current being sent through it without slightly electrocuting everyone within an arm's length. Not that it wasn't supposed to do exactly that. Only that it needed to be on the push of a button or the flick of a switch and not spontaneously in the hands of its creator. In summary, it needed a lot of work.

Loosening one screw to wiggle out a somewhat loose wire, Lu sighed. This wasn't working. She was not someone who worked good with hardware. It despised her, mocked her and regularly shocked her, quite literally. But software was only useful with hardware and while she definitely preferred one over the other, this wasn't exactly a project destined for teamwork. So she sucked it up, and went to work again, only to have her screwdriver clatter onto the table the moment someone tapped her shoulder.

"What's got you so invested?" she heard someone ask and Lu refrained from swatting at the petite girl who had just interrupted her.

"No sneaking up on me, Mona," Lu muttered.

"I know. I know. 'It's still unstable'," Mona replied, her eyebrows pulled high to match the ever present grin on her face, "Although you're a massive idiot for working here with other students, if it's that dangerous."

"It's not dangerous, not without an electrical source at least," Lu mumbled, her eyes not leaving her project. "Shouldn't you be in Ms. Norris' class now?"

"No, Lit is third period. We're already onto fifth," Mona answered and Lu snapped her wide eyes to hers, making her laugh. "Well shit, it's about time you learn how to tell the time."

"I completely lost track," Lu murmured and grabbed the screwdriver again to put the wire back in its assigned place, then her bag to pack it up. She hadn't meant for the day to pass her by like that. "I just wanted to skip on Halliday's class."

"If it's any consolation, old boy Halliday didn't say squat about you not being there," Mona waved her off, then sat down on the seat next to Lu, her fingers finding a steady rhythm on the wooden table, while Lu organised her things. "Speaking of not being there…"

Lu stopped for a moment, her lips pulling into a tight line before she faced the curiosity carved into Mona's face. "Yes?"

"Mom about freaked out last night," Mona said and Lu's stomach dropped again. She knew that Tanya liked to take the mistakes Lu or Mona made as a sign of failed parenting on her part, even if she was just Lu's aunt. Busying herself with her bag again, Lu turned away.

"I know. Sorry about that. McIdiot wasn't supposed to catch me," she said and shouldered her bag, pushing her hands deep into the pockets of her hoodie and heading for the door. Mona jumped up and stuck by her side.

"Of course he wasn't," Mona deadpanned and grabbed Lu by her upper arm, making her stop in her tracks but she still avoided looking into her cousin's eyes. "You're weird today."

"I'm-," Lu started but scrunched up her nose. She couldn't exactly tell Mona what had been on her mind ever since Daniel had given her that flyer.

"Is that about the money thing?" Mona pressed with narrowed eyes.

"What?" Lu scrunched up her nose and started walking again.

She had always felt bad that Daniel and Tanya had to pay for everything she needed and that she wasn't able to give something back. But she was still in high school, trying to get a scholarship for college so she wouldn't be a bigger burden.

And then there was the matter of her parentage that might have solved all of those problems, if she only had the guts to confront it. If Stark was willing, that was.

"Hey, what do you know about alimony?" Lu asked, ignoring her previous questions. She didn't need to watch Mona to know she was going to tilt her head and watch her through narrowed eyes.

"Why?" she inquired.

"Do you know anything?" Lu asked again, reaching her locker and shoving everything inside that she didn't need that day anymore.

"Did you find your dad?" Mona asked carefully.

"No," Lu told her. It wasn't exactly a lie but Mona didn't need to know about Tony. She had never been particularly good at keeping her mouth shut. "I just… I just think that if I did, it'd be easier on Daniel and Tanya, you know?"

Mona laughed then, a look of disbelief on her face as she leaned against the lockers. "As if mom and dad would ever take money from anyone."

"But-," Lu started, her own head making it difficult to make her thoughts into something comprehensible. "Just think that- What if my mom never told him about me?"

"Lu, we've been over th-," Mona started with sigh but Lucia interrupted her.

"No, think about it. Maybe he didn't know. Maybe he wouldn't have left, if he had known."

"You can't know that for sure." Mona's face had turned from amused to concerned. Lucia knew why. Talk of her father was always linked to talk about her mother.

Her uncle, Tanya and her cousin were as close to a family she still had after her mother's accidental death. It was enough for her, it really was. But she always felt this tiny thing in the back of her head, as if she was twelve again. She was still starving for that evidence of how she had come to be in that world. But she was older now and things weren't as simple anymore.


	3. 3

The day of the science convention had come quicker than Lucia had wanted it to. While her days had been filled with studying, tinkering and then crashing into bed with a movie that she promptly fell asleep to, she hadn't forgotten the crumpled up pamphlet in her bag. It had always seemed to loom somewhere in the back of her head. Of course, the billboard outside her window didn't help matters in any way, it just made her feel one of two possible emotions at all times: either sadness or resentment.

So, no matter what she had tried to do to get her mind off of this, it never worked.

Mona's incessant questioning of her worries and the fact that her project still wasn't anywhere close to being finished had finally led her to where she was now. Wracking her mind about going to the convention, or not.

Sitting at the kitchen bar and shoveling more sugar into her cereal bowl, Lu watched as Tanya ushered Mona through the apartment. Despite her being a somewhat well-adjusted young adult, Mona still had immense trouble keeping a lid on all of her belongings. Her room was a conglomerate of miscellaneous stuff and since she was supposed to be at school in a mere 20 minutes for her AP politics class trip to DC with a packed bag and, preferably, wallet and phone, Tanya was trying to speed up the process. Her wallet had been easily found but her phone had seemingly been swallowed by the earth.

"I thought you kids were supposed to be glued to these things nowadays," Tanya muttered, putting the pillows back to their proper places.

"Not everyone," Lu struggled through a mouthful of cereal, then swallowed hard. "But you're right, Mona usually is. Did you look in the bathroom? Last week she was trying to finish Candy Crush."

Tanya sighed deeply and yelled out, "Look in the bathroom!"  
Turning to Lucia, Tanya dropped onto the stool next to her. "So, while Mona is down in DC, what's your plan for the weekend? Please don't say you're going to finish Candy Crush as well."

"Dunno," Lu answered with a smile. "Maybe I can finally get some of my research for school done since Mona's not here to hog all of the bandwidth."

"I heard that!"

"You should have gone on that trip, too. Maybe you would have had fun, no?" Tanya tried.

"It's fine," Lu assured her. Nothing in the entire world could have made her tell Tanya why exactly she wasn't going on that trip. She had wanted the possibility to go to the convention. The trip to DC would have taken any option from her. It also cost money. "I've got plenty of stuff to do."

"Found it!" Mona's triumphant laugh made them look away from each other.

"Alright," Tanya patted her shoulder before turning to her daughter. "Let's go. You're keeping everyone waiting."

"Bye, Lu," she said, then turned to Tanya. "Where's dad?"

"Bedroom," Tanya answered, grabbing her bag and keys.

"Bye dad!" Mona's shrill voice made both Lu and Tanya jump.

"Jesus Christ!" Lu complained, shaking her sleeve, now drenched in milk.

"Love you all!"

"You too," Lu laughed and watched as they left, grabbing a cloth to clean up her mess.

"Bye, honey," she heard Daniel call back before he appeared in the kitchen. "She's like a siren, isn't she?" Daniel spoke up, pouring himself a cup of coffee.

Lu snorted, "In what way?"

"In that it'll probably kill you, if you hear her voice," he clarified before taking a sip, letting his eyes rest on Lucia's slumped over form. "So…," he started. "Feel alright?"

"What?" Lucia asked, shaking her head. "Yeah, fine. I'm just..-,"

"...wondering, if you should go to the convention?" Daniel finished, making Lu blow a raspberry.

"Yeah, more or less," she agreed, pushing her bowl of cereal away from her. That funny feeling in her stomach had returned.

"What's the 'less' part of that?" Daniel questioned with a slight smile, moving to sit across from her, next to the dining table. "Because these last few days the wrinkles on your forehead have gotten worse than mine ever did in the past ten years."

Shooting him a less than impressed look, Lu gave in. "Yeah, no. You're right. It's… I'm actually thinking of going."

Putting his cup of coffee aside, Daniel clasped his hands together. "That's great. Because…," he started, moving out of the room for a second. Lu heard him rummage through drawers of knickknacks in the hall before he reappeared, holding two ticket stubs towards her with a triumphant smile. "I'm taking you."

"Uncle Daniel," Lu started, a familiar feeling welling up again. "You shouldn't have, I could have gotten one at the convention today. I've got enough money left from my allowance and-"

"Lucia," Daniel interrupted and pressed the tickets into her palm, "Stop. This is fine, don't worry about it. I mean, I even got a discount through your school. You guys being insufferable know-it-alls has to have got its perks after all."

Pushing down her pride with a short laugh, Lucia nodded and moved in to hug him. "Thank you."

"You're welcome," he answered. "Although…"

Lu pulled away with a frown on her face. "Although what?"

Shaking his head, Daniel looked pointedly at the clock. "We should get going, or else we'll miss it."

"I'll be ready in five."

 **/**

Unlike the majority of her classmates, Lu had always been reliant on public transport. There had never been chauffeurs or even just huge cars that most owners hadn't even the slightest clue how to handle.

It had always just been buses and the subway. Despite the masses of people at times, the crying kids or the stifling heat, the normalcy of it all felt comforting. The moment she would step inside Brooklyn Tech, all that feeling would be forgotten again. That first moment inside the school was always a stark reminder of all the ways she didn't fit in. Not to get it wrong, she did fit in. Mostly. Just not in that way.

Swiping her card against the scanner of the entrance machine, Daniel followed close by. The subway station was filled with people, more so than usual but Lucia didn't have much space left in her head to watch them. Her nervousness had found a steady level during the past few days but now it seemed to be simmering, threatening to spill over. Or to be thrown up.

Daniel grabbed her shoulder then, steering her towards the subway car they needed to get on and found them a place.

"You alright?" he asked, not letting go of her shoulder. Lu knew he meant well but the hammering in her chest didn't let her answer. They both knew she wasn't.

"Have you ever met…," Lu started, not wanting to say his name in a full cart of people. "... _him?_ "

The topic of her father was broached only rarely. Mostly it just felt uncomfortable to be talking about Iron Man being her father, the absurdity of it all. But the topic always undoubtedly led to a talk about her mother which, despite the fact that her mother had died six years ago, was also uncomfortable in a painful kind of way for all involved.

"I… Kind of," Daniel answered, deeply in thought. "None of us knew that Vanessa and he were… a thing… a _something_ at least. And then your mom got picked up by a limo once. We made fun of her for that for a while, she had never been a sucker for glamor. Now that I think back on it, timing and all, there's no chance it wasn't him. So, yeah. With at least one bulletproof car door between us."

"Okay," Lu exhaled. "That means he won't recognize you."

"He won't recognize me, no," Daniel told her, then laughed silently, preparing to get out of the subway car. "Although it's a wonder no one has ever asked you, if you're related. You're the spitting image of that guy."

"Does that mean I look like a man?" Lu challenged, grabbing her bag and waiting for the subway to come to a stop.

"No," Daniel laughed, grabbing her arm. "Come on, let's go."

Walking through the station Lu's feet seemed heavier with each step and it almost started to feel as if Daniel had to drag her to keep her moving. She felt queasy and anxious but she had wanted to be there. It had been her choice.  
But Daniel had bought the tickets before she had ever even said she wanted to go, so she would've have gone either way, no matter her decision. She wouldn't have let him waste money like that. She felt nauseous.

Willing her feet to lift properly with each step, she took deep breaths, following after Daniel into the streets and towards the masses of people around the convention center. "If mom lied to me about him being my father," she panted, making Daniel swivel around to hear, "I'm gonna…"

"Your mum was a lot of things," Daniel shook his head. "But a liar was never one of them."

Running her hands through her hair, she tried to calm herself. But the more people suddenly moved around her, the worse it got. This would have been bad enough as a normal tech-interested person, the level of nervousness involved in meeting Tony Stark. THE Tony Stark. Iron Man. An avenger. A billionaire. A master engineer. Her father.

Holding onto Daniel as he pushed his way forward, Lu lost all train of thought to the worry boiling in her head. This wasn't going to go well.

Someone pushed her and she kept awkwardly stumbling after Daniel, the occasional arm and elbow in her way. This wasn't going to go well. At all.

They came to a halt then, Lu's eyes left the floor to find Daniel had brought them up to the entrance, lined with paparazzi, whistling and yelling people, and then, there was that damned limo.

Lu felt it in her stomach before the backdoor of it was ever even opened. The rumbling in her stomach got worse and the moment the door opened and that dark head of hair, the sunglasses and smirk were presented to the world, she bolted.

Ripping her hand away from Daniel's supposedly comforting grip, she ran to get away from everyone. Her feet hit the pavement hard with each step, her hand covering her mouth while the other tried to steady her shoulder bag. She ran towards the small park next to the convention center, and when she finally found a trash can, she let her bag clatter to the floor and removed her hand to throw up.

She didn't care if anyone saw. No way in hell would she have been able to live with herself, if she had thrown up right then and there, right in front of Iron Man's feet.

A comforting hand came to rest on her back, drawing familiar circles. "You alright again?" Daniel panted.

Forcing a laugh, Lu spit into the trash can and slowly let herself sink onto the bench, her head falling into her hands.

"That's not what I had in mind," she mumbled and looked through her bag for a bottle of water. The taste of sick wasn't really her favourite.

"Tell me about it," Daniel sighed and watched her, his eyebrows furrowed and lines evident on his face. She had always thought Daniel looked younger than he was. His sandy brown hair in its short style seemed youthful, his mannerisms even more so. Not even when he needed to get reading glasses did he look old. But now she could see the first obvious lines on his face and wondered what her mother would have looked like by now.

Taking a shuddering breath, she brought the bottle to her lips, willing her stomach to stop and Daniel not to ask any questions.

"I get why you're scared," Daniel started, breathing out audibly. "What I don't get is why you're so scared you're throwing up. When's the last time that happened? When you got stuck in that elevator when you were, like what, eight?"

"I threw up all the time as a kid when I was scared," Lu dismissed him. She wasn't getting into this.

"I know. But it's been a while," Daniel said and watched her clench her jaw."When?"

Pinching her eyes shut for a moment, Lu wiped her nose before pressing out softly. "When mum died."

The moment the news had reached her, she had gone numb. She wasn't scared at first. She didn't feel much of anything, like in a dream. Nothing could hurt her, or even touch her. But as realization started to dawn on her, the fear came with it. Ultimately, what made her throw up was the loneliness she would henceforth be subjected to.

Both stayed silent then, unsure of what to say. Words weren't going to cut it, he had dug in too deep. So Daniel's hand come to rest upon her shoulder. It took them both a few breaths to carry on, meanwhile watching as people started to file into the convention center by the dozen.

"So why now?" he asked carefully.

"He's…," Lu started and laughed humourlessly. "He's a hero," she told him and turned to face him. "If they suddenly announced that he was actually a father, everyone would expect the most of his kid."

"So what?"

"I'm not… the most. I'm like 1% of that. I have nothing to show for," she continued and shook her head when Daniel tried to interrupt her. "I'm also sure he has more important things on his mind than…," she trailed off.

"Than what?" Daniel inquired, suspicion already lacing his words.

Taking a deep breath, Lu shrugged her shoulders. "Than me."

"Why would you say that?" he asked, shaking his head.

"It doesn't matter anyway," Lucia said then, only to be cut off.

"Of course it matters!" he said but Lu waved him off with her hands. She didn't want to waste another word on it. It was bad enough that she had had to throw up from one glance. Her fears weren't going to evaporate from one conversation.

"I doesn't," she told him. "I fucked it up. What's done is done. I don't want to almost throw up on Iron Man's shoes again."

Taking a deep breath, Daniel unwillingly complied. "Are you good to go inside and give Stark a wide berth?"

Nodding her head softly, Lu said, "Yeah, I think so. But you're taller than me, so you'll have to steer me in the opposite direction the moment you see him."

Laughing softly, he ruffled her hair. "Of course." Pulling her up by her hand, they started walking towards the convention center. "I mean, there's a lot of other stuff besides Stark. I heard Schwarzenegger is running around here somewhere, blabbing about clean energy. Let's go pretend the Terminator is concerned about climate change doing his work for him."


	4. 4

Despite the initial start to her day, Lu had calmed down by the time she had found talks she was interested in and Daniel, the good uncle he was, endured every single one of them. She didn't think he could in any way interest himself in studies on thermonuclear weapons, or the rise of artificial intelligence and the theory of mind but he pushed through, trying to keep his yawns to himself and Lu loved him for it, even when he mockingly whispered " _God, I wish I could swap places with Mona right about now."_.

When her mother had died, the worst fear she had had had truly been her ending up alone. Despite the fact that she knew she had close family nearby, her brain started spinning stories of her going into the system and ending up with foster family after foster family. Sometimes she thought it would have been better for her mother to get sick gradually, so all details concerning her living arrangements would have been discussed already by the time her mother would have died. But then, she thought, she was glad that she didn't have to watch her suffer. She was able to spend every day until that bad one with her, no worries on her mind.

But then it had happened and she had ended up with Daniel and Tanya, a familiar environment, all its members, routines, smells not differing too much from her own home. It made life just a little bit easier, even though there was a vital part missing.

She had been an incredible woman, her mother. A medical engineer, smart as a whip, kind, and everything Lucia would ever really aspire to be.

Shaking herself out of her thoughts, Lu noticed the last talk coming to an end. She had seen about seven or eight talks that day and if Daniel next to her was already fighting sleep without really paying attention to any of them, really, she was spent.

Tugging on his shirt, she tried to get his attention when the talk had ended. "Ready to leave?"

"Jesus, yes," he muttered with a laugh and grabbed Lu's bag for her. "Come on."

The masses of people piling out of the room and her exhaustion made her move slowly. It had finally been enough on that day. She just wanted to go home, take a shower and fall asleep for at least the next ten hours.

However, the farther outside they moved, the denser the crowd got. They were probably waiting for someone, the amount of celebrities running around the convention wasn't little. Most of them were either engineers themselves or politicians campaigning for clean energy. They hadn't seen Schwarzenegger though, so Lu craned her neck to get a better view, just when someone bumped into her again, pushing her further outside of the convention center and onto the street, Daniel still trying to stay beside her.

She got pushed far enough outside where she could see an opening to escape the stampede behind her. Nodding to Daniel to show him the way, Lu wrestled through the people but was abruptly stopped when a hand came up against her chest, pushing her away with more strength than would have been needed for a girl her size. It caught her off guard, making her lose her balance and fall right onto the floor. But there were no people around her then. Lu realized the mistake she had made one second too late, as her eyes stayed glued to the blue carpet lining the sidewalk.

"What the hell are you doing?"

"My job, sir."

"Your job is to manhandle?"

"She was trespassing, sir."

"Get out of my way. You need a hand?" The man's hand appeared in her vision, slightly waving as if to get her attention. She couldn't bring herself to look up. That voice, she had definitely recognized it and it made her freeze up, the familiar nausea returning, tenfold. But she needed to get up, she couldn't sit on the carpet with Tony Stark waving his hand in front of her face without looking like a complete fool.

Taking in a shaky breath, she took his hand, let herself be pulled up and her breath stopped the minute she looked up, and funnily enough, so did his. Both gaped at each other, confused or afraid until he shook his hand loose, as if she had burned him. Looking her face over and over, his hand went up to his ear before he mumbled, "Recalibrate," before turning his attention back on her, raising his voice slightly to ask for her name. When she didn't respond, he grabbed her arm, asking again.

Her name. The question was easy enough but the panic rising inside of her made her hair stand on end. Her palms were already sweaty and she knew what would happen, if she even so much as tried to open her mouth. His hand tightened around her arm and his jaw clenched tightly, his expression immediately changing from startled to something more forceful. "Your name."

Feeling a hand on her shoulder, Lu's head whipped around to catch Daniel's deer-in-headlights expression and her stomach dropped. She had never even budged and answered his questions about her name, but Daniel had caught his attention then, so Lu pulled her arm out of his grip with all of her might and felt her feet hit the pavement before she even knew what exactly she was doing, letting them carry her away from the scene. She didn't really care where she went as long as it was far, _far_ away from… him.

In the end, Lu found herself retching over the all too familiar trash can again, holding back her hair with shaky fingers and alternating between slight sobs and dry-heaving for longer than she would have liked.

When the nausea finally wore off, she let herself rest on the bench, exhaustion pulling on every inch of her body. This was worse than anything she could have ever anticipated. At least it was dark outside by now, so she wasn't easily spotted in the park.  
But she could have given less of a damn about the way she had embarrassed herself. What was nagging her was Tony's reaction. Whatever it had meant, it wasn't good.

When she finally saw Daniel through her blurry vision walk up to her, his expression was grim and unnerved.

"What happened?" she asked, trying to stop from sniffling.

Daniel sank down next to her, and his hand found its familiar spot on her back. _Oh god._


	5. 5

The rest of the weekend had gone by in a blur. After the convention, Lu had tuned out every emotion trying to creep its way into her head. There was no embarrassment, no regret, no shame. Not even sadness or anger. It was a blank slate, made so by force and the rest of her night had been simply routine: drink water, eat toast, shower, brush teeth, sleep. She had done so because Tanya had made her, not because she had particularly wanted to. For all she could have cared, she would have gone to bed in her jeans and sweatshirt, puke still on its sleeve and stayed there for as long as she could have.  
But Tanya had gone into smothering mode the moment she had seen Daniel entering the apartment with Lu in tow, not asking any questions, seeing immediately that irreparable damage had been done in some kind of way. Tanya was good like that.

She had never talked about Tony with her but Lu was sure she knew. Tanya had a sixth sense when it came to things like these. It had become routine for Tanya to wait up with ice cream for Mona when she knew some guy had broken her heart, again. No one had known but somehow she had felt it. And Tanya wasn't only like that with her own daughter. However, in comparison to Mona, Lu had never really needed a lot of comforting.

After her mother's death, she had been sent from psychologist to psychologist, all trying to work through the trauma of losing her mother as early as she had. So whenever she got sent home at the end of another session, she didn't talk about it all too much anymore. There really wasn't that much need for it, seeing as most of it had been said in the session anyway, she thought.

Lu was definitely a more private person than Mona - that wasn't a difficult thing to achieve - but the dazed look in her eyes when she had entered the apartment had been sign enough for Tanya that Lu's head had gone into overdrive and threatened to explode.

So she had done everything possible without asking any questions.

But now it had been three days. Sunday had faded in a matter of minutes and even Monday had rolled around without regard to Lu's mental state. She had skipped that day anyway. But she had promised Daniel and Tanya she would go again on Tuesday and despite the shrill ringing of her alarm clock, nothing was going to make her move that day. Not Mona, who had returned from DC on Monday, the day before, knocking on her door every five minutes, nor Tanya, packing her bag for her and laying out clothes onto her bed, where she would probably not even find them anymore after a mere five minutes.

"Lu, I swear to God," she heard Mona's raised voice from behind the door again before she slammed it open. Moving into the room, she grabbed Lu's blanket to pull it off of her, almost making her fall off the bed the way she had been wrapped up in it.

"What the fuck, Mona?" Lu groaned and rubbed her eyes, so she could see her disgruntled cousin before her.

"I'm giving you one of two options," Mona started, crossing her arms. "One, you get up and go to school, _like you promised_ and you don't jeopardize your spot in one of New York's top schools," Mona stressed, "Or two, you tell me what the fuck is up so I can help you, or beat the crap out of someone."

Sighing, Lu knew Mona wasn't joking. One of the heartbreaks Tanya had helped her getting over had ended with Mona punching the guy in the face. The guy had had it coming, but one thing was clear: Mona meant it.

"I'm on my period," Lu mumbled and smushed her face into her pillow again.

"Sure," Mona answered in an overly exaggerated tone of disbelief, grabbed a pillow from the floor and threw it at Lu's head. "Get up, last chance."

Groaning loudly, Lucia rolled over to glower at her cousin. "If I get up now, will you stop harassing me?"

"No," Mona laughed, then thought about it. "Well, maybe. Get up," she concluded, grabbed Lu's hands and pulled her into a sitting position. "I'm not gonna help you get dressed, you're old enough. I'll wait in the kitchen."

Lu nodded and watched Mona leave, always with a spring in her step. Her good mood could be infuriating, her bossiness even more so. But Lu knew what she had meant. She had started feeling sad but her brain was still working. There was a lot of stuff she needed to do, that she needed to work on, a high school diploma that she wasn't going to forfeit just because she felt blue.

So she channeled all of her inner strength to get up, get dressed and meet Mona in the kitchen.

But even later, when they had finally arrived at school, sulking through Mr Halliday's statistics class, the sense of accomplishment for getting out of bed and doing _something_ had diminished completely.

Lu was just waiting for her free period to get to the workshop, to sink away and focus on something that brought her joy, with no one's nose in her business, no one looking concerned or mad, just no one in general watching her, at all.

So when the time came, she grabbed her things and made her way to the workshop, finding a place by the windows. There weren't too many people around, mostly seniors searching for a quiet place to study as exams were approaching again. Rummaging through her backpack, she found her own project, her headphones and some loose pieces of metal she had scavenged from the scrap yard.

She had worked on it tirelessly to keep her mind off of the convention before, so it had finally taken on shape. It didn't look like a toddler's creation anymore. It looked sturdy in its oblong form, with some sharp edges remaining on one side, the button visibly protruding at the top, some showing circuits on the other. But she hoped to finish it up within the next few days.  
Most of the minor problems had been eradicated but since she had had problems with it sending out unwanted electrical current, she was trying to install a fuse.

It was just that the fuse kept blowing, no matter what material she used. None were strong enough to withstand the current she needed for the project to send out electromagnetic waves with enough strength to shut down any electrical appliance around it. It needed to withstand the current but also blow, if it got too dangerous.

So she grabbed the crocodile clips and tested all metal bits she had in her bag. Some started glowing, then burnt up. The zinc one had melted immediately. Aluminium hadn't put up too much of a fight, either.

But before she sighed too loudly again, she rummaged in her bag once more. Henry had to have had some other bits of metal on his yard. Maybe she had been able to score just the tiniest bit of silver.

When her hands came out of the bag again, there were several bits, their colors ranging from bronze to silver. One bit stood out, though, ragged edges and covered in verdigris, setting itself apart with its vibrant green color. It was most likely oxidized copper but it could probably manage a few ampere of current.

Looking the bit over for a second, Lu shrugged her shoulders. If it blew, it blew.

Fixing it with crocodile clips, she waited for a reaction, for it to start glowing, to melt, or burn up. When there was none Lu let out a surprised laugh. That had been unexpected.

Smiling to herself, she started to quickly install it as a proper fuse in her project, before she grabbed all of her stuff and moved further down to a less occupied section of the workshop. It needed to be tested and if someone was going to get electrocuted, it would be better, if it was only her.

So she set up her project, laid down her phone next to it with its screen lit, took a deep breath and pushed the button. Inhaling sharply, she let go of it.

Instead of the things she had expected, a greenish ball of light appeared in front of her. It hovered for just a few seconds, its surface surrounded by light green fumes, before vanishing with a sizzle.

The fading of the ball turned into a tingle of current on her scalp, not hurting her but definitely noticeably moving away from its source in all four cardinal directions, sending her hair slowly skywards.

Her phone lost power.

The lights went out and someone cursed loudly a few rows down.

Lu remained in her position, eyes wide and mouth slightly gaping.  
Ultimately, it had done what it was supposed to do. Everything around her had lost power, just like it was supposed to work with Henry McIdiot's security measures. But that… thing…

"Wack," she heard someone whisper from behind her, followed by a strained laugh that made her jerk her shoulders up. " _Shit_ , Johnson, what was _that_?"

Turning around with reluctance, Lu forced a smile onto her face to mask her panicked expression, her mind going hundreds of miles a minute to come up with a somewhat believable excuse, she came face to face with one of her fellow seniors, his blond hair standing up in all directions. Her little project was probably to blame for that.

"Marty... hey… What are you doing here?"

"Shouldn't I be the one asking that?" Marty asked with a breathless laugh watching Lu start throwing her things into her bag, "That thing was insane! How'd you do it?"

"I was just testing something," Lu told him, swinging her bag over her shoulder and jumping up from her seat to swiftly move towards the hallway. "Backfired a bit, though."

"That didn't look like backfiring to me. More like an award nomination to happen," he laughed breathlessly, his eyes still wide behind his wire-rimmed glasses.

"Marty, please do me a favor and keep your mouth shut about this," Lu muttered a bit helplessly, and with that, she grabbed her appliance and walked out of the workshop, her heart beating relentlessly against her ribs. No one needed to know about her invention, least of all someone she was unlikely to involve in her criminal acts in any way at all.


End file.
